Dancing adds decades

A fox trot a day keeps the reaper away.

At least that's the case for Miriam Moore of Columbia, who today turns 105 after a lifetime of dancing and general high energy.

She was born in 1907 to Mathias and Ellen Teufel, the second-to-youngest of five children.

She's been active since the beginning.

"We didn't have television," Moore said of her childhood.

Instead, she and her neighborhood friends played tag and hide-and-seek in the construction site of Columbia's unfinished high school.

Moore, however, would never earn that diploma.

By 1917, when she was 10 years old, both of her parents had passed away under circumstances that neither she nor her family members could recall.

"She never talked about it much," Moore's granddaughter, Michelle Thomas of York, said.

The deaths splintered Moore's family, and she went to live with her aunt, Mary Dennison, in Columbia.

"I wanted to pay my own way," Moore said, and so she withdrew from school as a teenager to work at the Schwartzenbach-Huber Silk Mills in Columbia.

On the side, Moore was an avid dancer.

Her love of waltzes and fox trots led her to J. Edwin Moore, her future husband, whom she met at a church masquerade party.

"My neighbor had boys, and she always took me along to her Sunday school parties," Moore said. "That's where I met Ed. I went with him because he was a good dancer."

In 1935, the pair married, and Moore quit her job at the silk mill after almost a decade.

They went dancing two to three times a week. This pastime kept her fit and connected to her loved ones, she said.

"I lived long because I had a lot of love and the Lord gave me good health," she said. "When you love and have good health, you have everything."

Moore had one child, a son also named J. Edwin Moore. He moved to Daphne, Ala., where he works in publishing.

Moore's husband eventually became a manager at Tank Truck Rental Co. He passed away in 1984, and Moore lived alone after his death.

Eight years ago, at the age of 96, Moore moved into St. John's Herr Estate, where she lives in a private apartment.

She remains active and athletic to this day.

Matt Landis, the home's community life and recreation coordinator, said Moore participates in fitness class three times a week. More than that, he said she actually leads it when he's not available.

The class is "very active," he said. "We use weights, and it's pretty intensive."

The rest of her schedule includes watching game shows, devouring novels and playing cards with other residents.

"We used to play penny poker," she said mischievously, although now she prefers bridge. "We were big spenders."

If this is a sign of her slowing down, Moore shows few others.

When asked what event or development in the last century surprised her the most, she replied, "My old age."

jpianka@lnpnews.com